Mindstorm
by Niggle
Summary: Clark becomes trapped within his own mind after an encounter with a fortune teller previously posted at Ksite.
1. Part One

The crack of thunder disturbs the quiet peacefulness of the open plain. Amidst the somber deluge, the instant flash of light reveals a solitary figure enduring the downpour. Raising his head to the tempest, Clark Kent furiously cries out in frustration at accursed storm from which he cannot escape.

* * * * *

"I know Lex, but we just don't like taking Clark to doctors. We have our reasons."

"I can't believe you're going to put your own son's life in danger Mrs. Kent," Lex Luthor announced with anger, and concern, coloring his tone. "Especially when you have no idea what's wrong with him!"

"Look Lex," Jonathan spoke up angrily. "He's our son and we will do what's best for him!"

"Fine," Lex said turning stiffly towards the loft steps. "Just call me when you've come to your senses."

"Wow," Chloe said witnessing her first Jonathan-Lex argument. She stepped a little further from Jonathan, but not too far from Clark's fevered body.

"You said it," Lana said, joined by a nod from Pete. 

The momentary awkwardness among the group was soon cut short as Clark let out a small moan of pain. The three women rushed to Clark's side to help him in some way, while the two men looked on in silent frustration.

"As long as they're looking after Clark," Jonathan began to Pete, "you should probably tell me what happened."

* * * * *

Striding through the school doors, with a beatific smile settled on his handsome face, and the prettiest girl on the planet clinging to his side, the man of the hour arrives. Instantly besieged by fans asking for autographs and congratulating him on his latest victory, Clark Kent is only happy to oblige. Grinning up at the love of her life, Lana Lang gingerly unwraps herself from his comfortable, and mysteriously invulnerable, flannel jacket so that he can sign copies of the Torch. He signs pictures of himself in various heroic stances: uppercutting a meteor freak, pulling a bus from the path of a train, facing down some giant monster; the pictures are endless and he slights no one. He finally breaks away from the crowd after he sees Chloe, and her long-time boyfriend Pete, cheerfully making her way towards him. He and Lana congratulate Chloe for the wonderful stories she continues to write on him. She happily returns the thanks for giving her such terrific stories to write about. The four continue to talk about Clark's latest exploits and set up a time for their next double date at the Luthor mansion when…

**KRAKOOM**

Clark's perfect world is torn asunder by unearthly lightning. Lana, Chloe, Pete, school, his perfect life—all violently ripped away. All fade as the mocking rain washes it all away. Sobbing at the injustice, Clark collapses to his knees in the middle of the dark, endless plain of undeserved torment.

* * * * *

"I'm not really sure how it happened," Pete explained to Jonathan. "But it started when Chloe dragged us all to that new fortune teller to debunk her. Somehow, Chloe got Clark to go first. Everything was going fine until the lady told Clark to touch her crystal ball. As soon as he did, he went into convulsions. Before he passed out, he told us to bring him home."

"What about the fortune teller?" Jonathan asked, his eyes all but turning red.

"She freaked and took off as soon as Clark wigged."

"Well, we'd better find her." The tone in Jonathan's voice overriding any qualms, "And find out what she did to Clark."

* * * * *

A momentary hush falls, as Clark Kent arrives in front of the high school in one of Lex's Porches. Striding up the steps bedecked in black, he looks as if he owns the school, and in a way he does. Hair spiked up in a garish fashion, his face set in a perpetual sneer, no one dares stand up to him—the one time the football team tried, they all ended up in body casts…the lucky ones anyway. Strutting down the hallways, he occasionally slows to smash open a locker or two. The crowds of teens part in fear as he approaches. He makes his way to the remains of the Torch office—his own personal lounge—and arrives to meet his long time flunky, Pete. Clark drops himself down on what remains of a battered chair and gazes around in boredom. His eye catches on one of the remaining photos of himself. It is a particularly gruesome picture, which pleases him to no end. Looking at it, Clark momentarily regrets the loss of the girl—Chloe, he thought it was—who had taken it. She had been a hot little number, but had made him angry once too often. Dropping from his mind, Clark's thoughts turn to the fun he will have with Lex later. He always enjoys it when Lex gives him "jobs" in the city—better than being a loan shark even.

**KRAKOOM**

As the disturbing reality is washed away, blessed relief claims Clark. Once again, Clark howls over the hideous torture that besets him on the godforsaken plain.

* * * * *

"Damn!" Jonathan exclaimed in disgust and anger as he slammed his fist against the hood of his truck. The fortuneteller's office had been vacated in obvious haste. "I can't believe she took off."

"And she took her crystal ball with her." Pete said in just as much anger.

"Well, we have to find her, and fast."

Tires spun, then peeled out as Jonathan and Pete drove after the woman responsible for Clark's mysterious ailment.

* * * * *

Breathing in ragged gasps more of fear than lack of air, Clark hides behind a large tree in the middle of a national park. The fact that even there he isn't safe continues to claw at his mind. He doesn't know how the agents keep finding him and he doesn't care. All that worries him at the moment is that they have weapons laced with meteor fragments. He nearly vomits as he remembers how they had obtained that bit of knowledge about his weakness. He weeps for his lost friends and family—even the friend who betrayed him— as he once again speeds away, looking for somewhere safe to rest. The scent of the forest and the calm, unwavering trees, seem to mock his efforts to survive. The crack of a meteor-enhanced bullet being ejected from a high-powered rifle sends a wave of protesting birds from their roosts. The intense pain of having a hole forcefully projected through his body causes the speeding boy to slam into a tree. Slipping into the unforgiving dark of unconsciousness, the metallic tang of blood in his mouth, Clark, the hunted alien, hears the words that will haunt him forever—"Lock him up. Damn freak'll never see the sun again where he's going."

**KRAKOOM**

* * * * *

"Clark, please don't leave us! You can't leave us now. We all love you too much to let you go. As hard as it is to admit this, she loves you as much as I do. You can choose whoever you want, I don't care, just come back!"

* * * * *

A split second faster, a fraction of an inch more, that's all he needs, but it isn't enough. He simply isn't as fast as he has to be this time. Clark sees with dread as the bullets slips past his stretching fingertips. He screams in agony as the inching metallic slugs slam into the people he loves—Lana, Chloe, Pete, Lex, his parents—all contort as the finger of death touches each and every one of them. He watches in horror as they slump to the floor in excruciatingly slow motion. He turns to the gunman with the fires of hell blazing fury in his eyes. The man doesn't even have time to blink before he his literally torn apart. His sorrow rising within like a great tsunami, Clark turns and rushes to his dying friends.

**KRAKOOM**

* * * * *

"Jonathan! Pete! Did you find the fortune teller?" Martha asked with hope clouding her tone. Her face betrayed a look of hopelessness.

Lana and Chloe looked up from Clark's pale face quickly in the hope that the men had found a cure for the man that they loved.

"We had to trail her for an hour, but yeah," Jonathan said with more than a little anger flushing his face.

The stony look on Pete's face said little towards the situation.

"Well, what did you find out?"

"I'm not sure if it's good news exactly, or bad news," Jonathan said oddly. "I finally got out of the lady that her crystal ball has some…odd ingredients in it."

"Let me guess," Chloe spoke suddenly, her face twisted angrily, "It had meteor rocks in it. Those damn things mess up everything."

Pete and Lana looked quizzically at Chloe for the sudden change of mind.

"Actually, it did," Jonathan spoke, inwardly relieved that no one had thought it was partly Clark. "But there's more to it. The lady said that Clark has to come out of it on his own. There is no cure."

Silence fell over the loft as the realization sunk.

"Don't worry," Pete spoke unexpectedly, "Clark is tough—he'll make it."


	2. Part Two

The flashes come quicker and quicker. The cracks of thunder become deeper, more incisive, merging into one long, shattering wave of destructive sound. If he was on shifting sands before, now he is in free fall, plummeting endlessly through a shapeless void. Gone is the plain, the comforting illusion of ground beneath his feet. But there is sound and sight, clear and vivid and agonizing. So many faces, so many voices, blurred with speed, overlapping and merging. 

He sees his friends and family die, far away, then near, by his own hands, by each other's hands. He sees himself, in Metropolis, in New York, in Smallville, in a strange place that must have been home. He sees faces he thinks he should recognize, but they rush away before he is sure. So much death and so much life, over and over; the same stories with different endings, a cacophony of possibility, all pouring through his mind at once until he thinks it will surely be ripped to pieces.

He wishes for death, welcomes it. Not as death, but as an end to the pain, an end to the frantic, mad lies swirling all around him. Nothing is real. He has lost himself; he has lost his loved ones. Only shadow puppets remain, endlessly playing out their parts on invisible strings; empty, whispering echoes of the world he can no longer reach. He is spiraling down into insanity itself, and there is only one way to escape it.

***

"He's getting worse, not better!" Lana was close to tears, panic edging into her wide eyes. Clark's rapid, gasping breaths filled the room with their hollow sound. His face and arms glistened with sweat, despite the cool cloth his mother was using to wipe his fevered skin. Chloe and Lana stood next to each other on Clark's other side, each with a hand on his arm as if her touch could keep him from slipping away. Pete stood guard at the end of the couch, his face grave and drawn as he stared down at his stricken friend. Jonathan paced angrily by the stairs, filled with restless, vain energy. None could bring themselves to refute her, but the words hung in the empty air, challenging.

Minutes went by, silent save Clark's painful inhale and exhale, accompanied every so often by a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a whimper. His eyes darted wildly beneath closed lids, seeing visions, nightmares, dreams, that were never meant to be seen. His temperature rose farther, until even Jonathan and Martha gaped in astonishment as the cloth on his forehead began to hiss and steam. Chloe and Lana were forced to take their hands from his burning skin. The room slowly but perceptibly grew warmer around him. Martha stood up and backed away, motioning for Chloe and Lana to do the same.

"Step back," she said quietly, reluctantly. The words were like razor blades in her throat and the difficulty with which they emerged demanded that they be obeyed. The two girls instinctively backed away.

Clark's hands were formed into white-knuckled fists, his back just beginning to arch in the universal symbol for supreme agony. Jonathan stopped to stare at his son's hands, the thousands of pounds of pressure being contained in them. He let his mind just seize up, let the numb and shock protect him.

Martha watched her heart and soul being torn to shreds before her eyes. She wanted to scream, but she could not. Uncomprehending terror froze her as she stood. Her son…no…not her son. It could not happen. It was unthinkable, impossible. The very notion was too unbearable to contemplate. He could not be taken. Not her son.

There was no way that his parents could have known, of course, but they did. They knew what would happen; they saw what was happening even if they refused to accept it. Somehow they were not surprised when he gave a last, trembling exhale and relaxed completely, one arm slipping limply over the side of the couch. His chest did not rise again. Only the sweat moved on his body, sliding down in streaks like so many raindrops.

Pete felt as though his entire body had been plunged into an arctic sea when the heat stopped emanating from Clark's body. Two seconds ago his best friend and been breathing and now he wasn't. Lana screamed and fell to her knees next to Clark. Holding his face in her hands, running her fingers through his hair, she sobbed hopelessly. Chloe's face was expressionless as the moisture in her eyes spilled over her cheeks. She methodically began CPR, ignorant of the futility of her actions. And some distance away, in an exiled fortress of stone, a man, old though his years were few, sat up, forgetting the fear and the anger he had been nursing. He who had never known friendship realized that his brother was lost to him.

***

It works. He lets go, he gives in, and everything stops. He lets the peace settle over him, a soothing, invisible blanket of silk. So much serenity, and so deep. He realizes that the storm cannot touch him here, but he also knows that he still cannot reach the world. But as least he can see it, like Plato's shadows on the cave wall. He sees, but he does not see, himself, lying on the couch in his loft. He can hear, but he does not hear, voices, not rapid and nightmarish, but distant and quiet. He's aware of them, but they do not intrude on his own personal quiet, his own personal peace. He doesn't know if they are thoughts spoken out loud; he cannot hear so clearly. All his senses have blended into a formless awareness.

_"It won't do any good, Chloe. Leave him."_

"No! No, I won't! He can't…he can't…"

Chloe and Lana are near him, holding him. He cannot feel their hands, but he knows they are there. Pete stands nearby, his eyes wide. He's terrified. Why is he so afraid?

_"Pete?"_

He doesn't hear; none of them answer when he calls. They cannot feel him as he does them. His mother is sliding to the floor, staring, but not seeing. His father starts to go to her, but something stops him and he just looks numbly at the floor.

_"No, no…not my son…he was so strong. How could it happen? No, you can't take my son…please…"_

"I should have done…there must have been…how could I…I've failed him…"

"Clark, I love you! I never told you that I love you! I love you…you can't leave me…you can't leave us."

"No. I won't allow it. Breathe, goddamn you! I should have never taken you there. Oh God, I'm so sorry!"

"Why? Jesus Christ, why?"

He withdraws his attention from them, recoiling from their pain. It is not so much an action of movement as an action of thought. He doesn't move, but his awareness does. He flies, faster than anything with wings, and higher. He soars over Smallville. He's had this dream before, but now he can have it forever. A forever of freedom.

_"Something's happened. God! Why wouldn't they get a doctor?"_

He is wrenched back into that which he sought to escape. Lex is there, surrounded by stone, mourning the only friend he has ever known. Clark feels it, as he felt the others; he cannot run from it.

This time, rather than shrinking away, he quests out towards those he has left behind. Pain and loss and blinding grief cascade over him in a colossal torrent. He feels something besides the peace: a sudden, desperate need for those voices he can sense to be clearly audible. He wants to be able to feel them – really feel them – and really see them. He fears the separation. He does not want to fly alone. Freedom alone is no freedom at all.

But to reach them, he must pass through madness.

***

"Chloe…"

Pete's arms were on hers, gently drawing her back from Clark's prone form. It had only been minutes – just minutes! Emergency room doctors had revived people who had been dead for almost a half hour. Of course they did more than apply CPR; they had defribulators and drugs and IVs and…

"Why wouldn't you take him to the hospital?" She was surprised by how steady her voice sounded. Just another question, just another interview. All reporter, that was her. If only that hadn't been what had killed Clark. She thought her heart would collapse at the very thought, but miraculously it kept beating.

The Kents didn't answer. It didn't seem that they could. Lana and Pete were avoiding her gaze. They were still dazed, unbelieving. They hadn't started asking questions yet. But questions were all she had, all that stood between her and end of her world. Not Clark. Never Clark.

Then the miracle happened.

Clark gasped; one long, shuddering inhale, his spine arching off the couch, his eyes wide open, but unseeing. Heat rolled off his body in waves as the fever returned suddenly and with a vengeance. His arms clawed blindly for something to grip and Chloe started forward to hold his hand, but Mrs. Kent stopped her with an outstretched arm. Clark's father stood behind her, shaking his head in agreement.

The sharp crack of snapping wood turned her head back to Clark and she immediately saw the reason for the Kents' silent command, even if she didn't understand how they could have known. The whole back of the couch was broken off and even as she watched, Clark's fingers dug into the stuffing and tore it to shreds, splintering the wood supports like toothpicks. His other hand groped aimlessly, ripping through the planks of the floor until it hit the metal stool Mrs. Kent had brought in. The seat toppled, sending the basin of water that had been sitting on it crashing to the floor where it wobbled and rolled towards the steps. The steel legs were crushed like tin foil in his grip.

A thrashing leg took out the armrest with a snap. He panted raggedly, his mouth still open in a silent scream and his eyes rolled back into his head. She watched in horrified fascination with the others, an unseen battle.

***

He is back inside, back in the lashing rains of chaos and illusion. But the only way out is through. He holds on to that thought, that purpose, using it to keep the fall controlled. He fights the madness the only way he can. He neither struggles nor surrenders; he simply accepts. He rolls with its blows, letting it flow over and through him. He sublimates panic, frustration, anger – everything. Except purpose.

Riding out the storm, he begins to see truth in the lies and reality in the illusion, threads of logic lacing chaos. The things he sees are possibilities, and in that sense they are neither true nor false; they simply are. But beneath the endless forking paths, there are commonalities, foundations. The chaos is not random, and the pattern, when understood, is all the more dazzling for its endless complexity.

He sees the home he has never known, the family he has never met, the life he could have had. He sees his heritage; life from death, creation from destruction. He sees himself, he sees the hero, who is nothing more than a man. He sees a future, one of a million million possibles and the choices and non-choices that form it. Ultimately, he sees the essence of destiny, those facts he cannot escape, that he would not want to escape.

These things are true; they are real. Illusion is not false, but a facet of truth. He understands the visions, and with understanding comes control. He seizes lightening, captures wind, contains thunder. He channels the power he now understands is his. He makes his way back to what he left, the storm dissipating in his wake.

_Finis_


End file.
